08-December-2005, 07:19 PM
|
 |
Vulcan Administrator
|
|
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Greenbelt, MD
Posts: 24,460
|
|
Lunar dust storms
An old Apollo experiment is telling researchers something new and surprising about the moon.
Quote:
Every lunar morning, when the sun first peeks over the dusty soil of the moon after two weeks of frigid lunar night, a strange storm stirs the surface.
The next time you see the moon, trace your finger along the terminator, the dividing line between lunar night and day. That's where the storm is. It's a long and skinny dust storm, stretching all the way from the north pole to the south pole, swirling across the surface, following the terminator as sunrise ceaselessly sweeps around the moon.
Never heard of it? Few have. But scientists are increasingly confident that the storm is real.
The evidence comes from an old Apollo experiment called LEAM, short for Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites. "Apollo 17 astronauts installed LEAM on the moon in 1972," explains Timothy Stubbs of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It was designed to look for dust kicked up by small meteoroids hitting the moon's surface."
|
__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
|
Linear Mode
